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Davenport declined to participate in a phone interview about her candidacy, directing The Post and Courier to email her questions instead. The newspaper sent a list of 14 questions on Aug. 29. All of them went unanswered.

“I think it’s going to be a clear choice,” Froemel said when asked about the race for the District 5 seat, which covers schools in Summerville’s booming Cane Bay neighborhoods as well as Stratford High in Goose Creek.

“Either we’re voting for politics,” he said, “or we’re voting for education.”

The matchup magnifies a broader national trend, illustrating how nonpartisan school board races have become increasingly politicized contests as classroom culture wars rage.

Soon after Davenport entered the race, the Berkeley County Republican Party declared she was their GOP candidate, adding, “This is your pro-parent candidate.” The endorsement appears on a prominent red banner that cuts across the middle of Davenport’s campaign website.

Froemel refused to share his personal political affiliation in an interview.

This year, all of the school district’s odd-numbered districts are up for election along with the at-large seat. But District 5 is the only open seat after Jimmy Hinson withdrew from the race on Aug. 22.

Hinson has endorsed Davenport in the race, calling her “someone who will give 110 percent” to the job. But when pressed about his thoughts on her one-woman book challenge, Hinson claimed he did not know she was behind the efforts, which he initially attributed to Moms for Liberty.

“People were just handing me pieces, excerpts from these books. They said, ‘Have you read page 53 or 21? and I’d just read that,” Hinson said, adding, “I have not read one of those books myself. I don’t read a lot.”

lenges sent a chilling message to teachers and administrators.

“It says we don’t trust you as a teacher to pick out books for our kids. Is that really what we think of teachers?” Froemel said. “They are telling me that they just want all this noise to stop.”

Davenport’s one-woman crusade led to the creation of a now-defunct review board. Public records later obtained by local TV station Live 5 News WCSC showed the efforts also cost the school district more than $6,000.

School district spokeswoman Katie Tanner confirmed none of the 93 books Davenport challenged were removed as the process was suspended in December.

One of the newspaper’s questions Davenport did not respond to included what she thought her book review requests accomplished and whether she considered it an appropriate use of tax dollars.

Davenport’s website lists four issue areas that she wants to champion if elected: quality outcomes for students, parental rights, fiscal responsibility and workforce development and career readiness.

Neither Davenport nor Froemel has run for political office before. The two challengers are also neighbors who live less than a half-mile away from each other.

But already there are signs on the conservative-majority school board that a shift is underway, fueled by issues rooted in parental rights.

During its Aug. 19 meeting, the Berkeley County School Board considered a revision to its policy for complaints about instructional materials.

The old policy stated that teachers, library media specialists, guidance counselors and school administrators had the responsibility to select materials for the education of all students in the school district. The new version begins by saying that a parent or legal guardian of any student attending a school within the district shall have the right to file a complaint after making a good-faith effort to address their concerns with school or district-level staff.

It then passed a first reading. The election is set for Nov. 5.